1988 MJ SB 4cyl- New to me

[Sigtact]

So here is my "new-to-me" 1988 MJ.  To be honest, I grew up doing electrical mods on cars for stereo competitions and not mechanical so I figured I'd try this little truck out and see what I can do! 

 

I purchased it for well under $2000 in late Dec. '16 and overall it had a few little issues... nothing too bad.

• Power Steering Pump was making a hellacious noise when turning... (fixed, just added fluid)
• Exhaust leak (no big deal)
• Tail Lights and Dash Lights work intermittently
• Leaking Valve Cover Gasket
• Leaking Rear End seal
• Someone upgraded the bench seats for two dirty buckets
• Dash looks hideous with the carpet, and interior is cracking in spots
• Truck has has a cheap paintjob... its flaking in spots

The problem is that I took a new position with my company and am on a long-term assignment to Southern California and all of my tools are back in Alabama... so the progress has been a bit slower than I would have liked.  I've been scouring the junkyards here with a medium crescent wrench, a $6 multi-bit screw driver set, and a leatherman pocket knife.  I eventually broke down and bought a HF mechanics toolset for $35 to hold me over until the end of the month when I visit Alabama to ship some tools back out here.

 

I absolutely welcome any advice that you guys have on these trucks.  

My goal for this truck is to keep the stock look, but replace parts where I can with better condition ones (i.e. dash, seats, replace idiot lights, etc.)

 

I'll make some follow-up posts to this thread with the progress on issues that I'm having and all! I'll post the pictures that I have that I remembered to take in the last two weeks and be sure to take more going forward :)!

 

Here is the truck-

[Sigtact]

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[Sigtact]

My next task is to troubleshoot the tail lights and dash lights so I can reliably drive it at night.

 

So after reading, I first set my sights on the fusebox... and yes, there is the leaky fluid issue on this truck.  My next step will be to quickly replace the Master Cylinder once I get the lights working.

 

The guy I bought it from said he'd have to reach underneath to the fuse box and just wiggle things around and sometimes they would work.  Well, upon closer inspection I found several fuses that were completely destroyed by the brake fluid...  But also, I noticed that someone had intentionally put an average of 5A over the rated fuse for the circuits and it got me a bit concerned.  One even had 15A over the rating!!!

 

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Can you tell yet there are probably issues because of this?  Well, I did replace all of the fuses to the correct ones and low-and-behold the dash lights and tail lights worked perfectly! I say perfectly, but the headlight switch (HLS) was not working very well and hardly worked for the dimmer setting.

So, during the dash swap I checked it out and was not really sure exactly what I saw until I saw the replacement switch/harness...  Needless to say, its a good thing this didn't catch on fire! 

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Side-by-side comparisons for those that don't know to see just how bad the connector melted

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Next, I am going to replace the harness and splice the new female spade connectors into it and use the new switch.  I decided to try the $4 junkyard switch instead of the $20 autoparts store new one... I figured if it didn't work, then its only $4 and I'll get the new one.

 

Unfortunately, after the dash swap the tail lights and dash lights no longer work... so I'm going to troubleshoot that tomorrow, but not really looking forward to it without my multimeter (its in Alabama and I hate buying new stuff when I have top quality gear about 3-4weeks away).  

[Wiggilez]

anything from the seat forward will enter-change from 96 and down xj. 97 and up outer panels will fit but the dash won't without some work.